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Review: 'Posies, The'
'Solid States'   

-  Label: 'Lojinx'
-  Genre: 'Pop' -  Release Date: '29.4.16.'-  Catalogue No: 'LJX103CD'

Our Rating:
Yes The Posies are back with the bands eighth album and the first one since the bands Drummer Darius died last year and a cd I was rather excited at receiving a review copy of as I am a fan of both the band and the work that Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer have done as part of Big Star.

So it is with a heavy heart that I have to say from the opener We R Power this is an album that lets me down in more ways than one. Yes they still have some power but this is processed pop rather than Power pop and have they really put the vocals through Autotune.

Unlikely Places makes it more clear that processed pop is where they are currently at with the Autotuned vocals and everything else sounding far too reliant on pro-tools and computer trickery, the song itself isn't too bad it's just the production that I find very off putting like they want to be the next Beliebers to break big.

Scattered has some nice strings going on and at least the vocals sound mainly natural before it all goes faux clubby failing to sound quite as ambient cool as they think they do, it fails in a similar way to some of the tunes on John Cale's Adventures in Nooky Wood do. If only the song was made up of the little guitar break and they'd left the rest of the song in the can.

Titanic has probably the oddest Iceberg Slim reference in musical history as this song sounds nothing like anything he would have associated with and the rest of the lyrics aren't much better over sort of ambient processed to death pop and almost Ed Sheeran style mewling vocals this song deserves to sink without trace.

Squirrel VS Snake is surreal like they have used a random lyric generator for a song about hating government surveillance but sounding splintered and like someone randomly spouting off while off their trolley and the music is almost as confused. I am truly bewildered as what they think they are trying to do.

March Climes has more of the Ed Sheeran's about it but at least it's a bit closer to what I would have expected from the Posies even if previously it would only have been an b-side at least it's pretty coherent for a modern processed pop song that would have sounded ok being covered on American Idol only that's been canned.

M Doll opens like it's meant to be a dance floor banger with a bit of a Telex meets Jean Jacques Perrey feel to it and some interesting lyrics over some odd bass sounds and the weird keyboards throughout.

The Definition has some worryingly off key sounding falsetto and a cheap clap track and odd casio sounds to say it really doesn't work is putting it mildly as they seem to be trying rather too hard to sound current. The best bit of the song is the Keyboards it finishes with.

The Plague sounds very familiar like they have stolen the song structure wholesale and then tried to gussy it up into something new and well it sounds sort of ok. Pretty much the only song on the album I want to hear again. No it doesn't sound like classic Posies, but it is more than listenable.

Rollercoaster of Zen is more rollercoaster of why why why have you made this album and not something influenced by your experiences playing Big Star's third repeatedly it's bland beyond belief and after about 2 minutes of it I am watching the countdown on the i-tunes player waiting for it to end.

The Sound Of Clouds is pretty much the sound of me hoping and praying for the album to end and to be put out of the torpor it is bringing on. The only saving grace is no auto-tune on the vocals but that's cold comfort by this point.

The final track Radiance sounds like something Tim Hutton of Soul Ascendants/Groove Armada might put out and is one of the better tracks on the album.

If you've never heard The Posies before go out and get Frosting On The Beater, Flavor Of The Month or Failure instead of Solid States. If you really have to have this album it's available from www.lojinx.com-the-posies

  author: simonovitch

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